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Boeroer

Posted 17 September 2018 - 10:21 PM

Boeroer

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Brilliant is broken. Mostly because it refills casters' spell uses. For fixed pools (Guile, Bond, Mortification, Discipline, Zeal) it's good but I wouldn't say it's OP. For rechargable pools (wounds, phrases, focus) it's not very potent at all as a tier 3 inspiration. For spell uses it's the total OPness.

There's a reason why every wizard wants to use the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry - and Brilliant is like having a Grimoire of Endless Wizardry. Spells are balanced in a way that they provide more powerful effects - but in change you only have few uses. If you get unlimited uses... it's OP.

Why does the Devil of Caroc Breastplate increase fixed pools by +2 but not spell uses? Becaus it would be too good.

The simple solution would be to prevent Brilliant to regain spell uses. OPness solved. But maybe fun dies.

A great solution that would also balance Brlliant for all pools would be to let it refill 1 fixed pool point every 12 sec, 1 refillable pool points every 6 sec and 1 spell use every 30 sec. Or something like that. No idea where the perfect balance would be. Just a direction.

As it is it's totally OP and that's also the reason we don't see it that often while we see Swift and Resolute and stuff everywhere.

AndreaColombo

Posted 17 September 2018 - 10:32 PM

AndreaColombo

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That I know of, Swift is only available to Wizards and Rogues as a self-buff, and Corageous can only be given by Paladins who choose the relevant upgrade to LoH. Besides, Corageous isn’t bad IMO; with the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry it would be a godsend.

If Brilliant is balanced in a way that prevents spamming Salvation of Time, fun is gone—again, to leave an ability untouched that is but a glorified God Mode.

Boeroer

Posted 17 September 2018 - 10:51 PM

Boeroer

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The problem is that Brilliant treats every pool the same (+1 per tick) while those pools are balanced differently for the game. Spells are powerful per use but uses are limited, fixed pools have some good effects per 1 point but aren't endless as well, fluid pools need more points per ability but are refillable.

The whole problem is that Brilliant just gives +1 to everything regardless how powerful 1 point per pool is. And also that it gives multiclass chars double the resource than it gives single class chars.

thelee

Posted 18 September 2018 - 10:16 AM

thelee

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I disagree with this analysis: BDD is just another form of healing. Literally any healing makes you completely unkillable for a length of time in the game, the only difference is that with most heals the length of time is directly connected to how much damage you are taking, whereas with BDD the healing is variable and the length of time is fixed. (To put another way, a Restore for 30 health against someone hitting you for 1 damage every 3 seconds has given you 90 seconds of unkillable immortality, but a fraction of second against a huge enemy army. BDD against an entire army will give you like thousands of effective healing, but against that same guy hitting you for 1 damage every 3 seconds will barely give you double-digits worth of health even with huge intellect or salvation of time.)

BDD isn't just another form healing. It imposes a state in which a character cannot fall unconscious regardless of incoming damage. Which mean incoming damage per instance can be infinite and rate of incoming dmg can be infinite per unit time. And it also does not depend on the target's Health Pool.

Honestly, I think healing and BDD are quite different. And I can't really realistically draw a comparison.

Like I said to AndreoColombo, mathematically they're the same. Healing accomplishes one fundamental thing: prevents you from dying/knockout for a period of time. This is somewhat of an abstraction (in this abstraction, you are at 1 health and any hit would kill you/knock you out), but is also fundamentally true: healing 20 health accomplishes literally nothing in the game unless that 20 health would have prevented you from dying/knockout at some point. And how long that healing prevented you from dying/knockout is what lets you measure the relative strength of a heal.

The difference between BDD and a straight-forward "instantaneous" healing is how they accomplish that fundamental thing. Instantaneous heal effects gives you fixed numerical healing, so the effective duration of its dying/knockout protection is contingent on how much damage you're taking.So like in my earlier post, if you Restore someone for 30 health, against a weak fly doing 1 damage every 3 second, you basically prevented knockout for 90 seconds. However, if you are up against twenty Dracoliches, that Restore will prevent death/knockout by a mere fraction of a second. On the flip side, BDD gives you a fixed duration of protection from dying/knockout, but that means its numerical healing is the one that varies. Like I mentioned in the previous post, BDD is extremely effective when you're fighting twenty Dracoliches because it effectively is giving you a Restore for 1000s of health. But it's extremely ineffective against that weak fly (worse than Restore, in fact).

I think some people are getting hung up on the fact that BDD 's tooltip doesn't say that it "heals you" but that's really just an in-game semantics difference. If Deadfire was just a gigantic spreadsheet that you put numbers into, it would be extremely clear that BDD is just another form of healing. I would say that people who have taken high school physics or watch pop astrophysics on TV/youtube might be able to pick this up better, because you might already then be used to equations where you're treating "different things" (like mass/acceleration, mass/energy, or space/time) as essentially interchangeable because what ultimately matters is that the terms in the equation balance out and they're describing the same physical phenomenon. Except here, instead of E= mc^2 or F=ma or K=.5 * mv^2, it's immortalityDuration = damagePrevented / damagePerSec: a spell like Restore sets damagePrevented so the final immortalityDuration varies by damagePerSec whereas BDD sets immortalityDuration which means the damagePrevented depends on damagePerSec.

To further clarify, let's talk about Druids. Druids are probably the best way to illustrate the similarities between BDD and a Restore because Druid heals are essentially all periodic heals. That means that depending on the situation, their heals are more BDD-like (inelastic duration, elastic health restored) or more Restore-like (inelastic health restored, elastic duration). Let's say The Moon's Light heals 10 every 3 seconds, and lasts 18s. How long does it prevent death? Against anyone dealing exactly 10damage every 3 seconds, it is exactly like BDD for 18s. Against anyone dealing more than 10damage every 3 seconds, The Moon's Light is essentially a Restore for 10. Against anyone dealing less than 10 damage every 3 seconds, it functions exactly like BDD for 18s plus a Restore for any of the remainder. In effect, BDD is an alternate version of Robust/The Moon's Light that says "I will always heal you an amount every 3 seconds to prevent knockout, but the price is there's no excess for you to keep if you take less damage than needed to stay alive while I'm active."

The problem is that Brilliant treats every pool the same (+1 per tick) while those pools are balanced differently for the game. Spells are powerful per use but uses are limited, fixed pools have some good effects per 1 point but are endless, fluid pools need more points per ability but are refillable.

The whole problem is that Brilliant just gives +1 to everything regardless how powerful 1 point per pool is. And also that it gives multiclass chars double the resource than it gives single class chars.

I think the suggestion to scale the amount of time needed to restore a spellcast is a good one. Here's how I imagine it would happen:

single-class martial: every 3 s you get 1 resource restored.

single-class spellcaster: every 3 s you get 2 PL worth of spells restored, which accumulates if nothing gets restored and can never restore more than one spell at a time. So if there's a PL1 to be restored, it gets restored. However, if you only have an expended PL3 slot, then you have to wait another 3s (6s total) to have total of 4 PLs worth of restoration "stored up" and then you get your PL3 spell restored. If you only have a PL9 slot available, then you have to wait 15 seconds to get it back. I chose "2 PL" worth of spells because spellcasters get PL9 and the most expensive martial abilities take up 4 martial resources (Trickster bonus ability/spells gives us a pretty explicit mapping), so I think that would roughly equalize the power level for Brilliant between martial and casters.

multi-class: Brilliant goes round-robin

multi-class martial A/martial B: at 3s, gets 1 class resource back for A, at 6s gets 1 class resource back for B, at 9s gets 1 class resource back for A, etc. If for some reason A doesn't have any expnded resources, then Brilliant just focuses on B.

mant2si

Posted 18 September 2018 - 10:32 AM

mant2si

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...

Mathematically you right and I really like that this spell give us one more way to survive a lot of damage, but technically BDD is GOD mode, i.e even console commands like KillAllEnemies (which can kill Ukaizo during transitions) can't kill guys under BDD effect, under BDD effect you can get more that 3 injuries and survive instant death abilities

Reminds me of how in BG2, kill-undead effects (like sunray) or the special ctrl-k death command (turning on cheats) were actually implemented as doing ~1000 unresistable damage to get around the fact that some undead had anti-instakill protections on them.

AndreaColombo

Posted 18 September 2018 - 11:02 AM

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Let's say The Moon's Light heals 10 every 3 seconds, and lasts 18s. How long does it prevent death? Against anyone dealing exactly 10damage every 3 seconds, it is exactly like BDD for 18s. Against anyone dealing more than 10damage every 3 seconds, The Moon's Light is essentially a Restore for 10. Against anyone dealing less than 10 damage every 3 seconds, it functions exactly like BDD for 18s plus a Restore for any of the remainder. In effect, BDD is an alternate version of Robust/The Moon's Light that says "I will always heal you an amount every 3 seconds to prevent knockout, but the price is there's no excess for you to keep if you take less damage than needed to stay alive while I'm active."

There is one fundamental difference that sets BDD apart from any healing source in the game: It can't possibly be out-damaged. If your enemy dealt infinite damage per swing, it would still not kill you while under the effects of BDD. This is not just a semantic difference; it is a pivotal difference. Any other healing source can at least potentially be out-damaged by either a very powerful enemy, or a group of enemies focusing fire—and how much damage is required to out-damage the healing effect depends on its base heal plus any modifiers that may or may not be in place.

BDD does not depend on ANY modifers and can prevent infinite damage for a duration. This is also known as God Mode, which in every other game I know is a cheat. To allow the base duration of BDD to be extended in any way means opening BDD to all sorts of abuse and cheese.

Now, I don't personally mind if it can be abused because, as I said, I never pick it. Abuse it or not, God Mode effects bore me to tears. Boring Death's Door is what it is. I can see how other people may hate the existence of this particular cheesy tactic, but it is also very easy to avoid (I avoid it myself despite being an OCD maximalist and a powergamer, for personal taste eventually wins out past a certain point) and—as noted—it's got fairly high metagaming (and party composition) requirements.

I understand that infinite Missile Salvos are a problem. An easily avoidable problem (I don't even have a Wizard in my ideal party), but potentially more immediately intuitive than BDD. However, I doubt Obsidian would do anything more sophisticated than removing an ability entirely from the game, and/or nerfing it into uselessness. Considering their track record of applying multiple fixes to the same problem without testing them individually first, my expectation is that they'll remove Brilliant from the game again and nerf Salvation of Time pretty hard. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

mant2si

Posted 18 September 2018 - 11:11 AM

mant2si

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BDD does not depend on ANY modifers and can prevent infinite damage for a duration. This is also known as God Mode, which in every other game I know is a cheat. To allow the base duration of BDD to be extended in any way means opening BDD to all sorts of abuse and cheese.

But you forget to say that Arcane Dampener or any other effects which reduce buffs duration usually mean instant death (that why my latest build can't kill BoW dragon solo), on other side full-healed character for example with Unbending can survive such spell

So you can easily dispel GOD mode,

There also exist Babel spell in WoW and similar mechanic in Dota and BG series also has scrolls with immunity to different things (Undead, Magic, Weapon)

Raven Darkholme

Posted 18 September 2018 - 11:43 AM

Let's be real: the only reason we potentially fear nerfs to abilities is because they get overnerfed or removed.

When brilliant was op on chanter it straight got removed.

Why later they would ever bring it back and make it an allied only ability, nobody knows, because the ability stayed the same and only got removed from solo play, which is quite weird since a solo char is already weaker than a party

If the duration it took to regain abilites was nerfed it would have been a good nerf, if the way it worked on casters was weaker in it's previous state and remained similar/slightly nerfed for martial classes it also would have been good.

But we fear any kind of nerf cause they never follow common sense.

And we fear that like Poe1 some bugs will never get fixed, while new bugs keep appearing after the less needed balance "fixes".

thelee

Posted 18 September 2018 - 03:46 PM

thelee

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Let's say The Moon's Light heals 10 every 3 seconds, and lasts 18s. How long does it prevent death? Against anyone dealing exactly 10damage every 3 seconds, it is exactly like BDD for 18s. Against anyone dealing more than 10damage every 3 seconds, The Moon's Light is essentially a Restore for 10. Against anyone dealing less than 10 damage every 3 seconds, it functions exactly like BDD for 18s plus a Restore for any of the remainder. In effect, BDD is an alternate version of Robust/The Moon's Light that says "I will always heal you an amount every 3 seconds to prevent knockout, but the price is there's no excess for you to keep if you take less damage than needed to stay alive while I'm active."

There is one fundamental difference that sets BDD apart from any healing source in the game: It can't possibly be out-damaged.

mant2si basically got it right, but just to elaborate here, this is not a pivotal difference. BDD and an instant heal are connected by the same equation. The flip side to "BDD can't possibly be outdamaged" is "Restore can't possibly be dispelled", which is what mant2si was basically saying with regards to Arcane Dampener.

Druid heals are again the illustrative connective spell here, because a spell like The Moon's Light can be both out-damaged and dispelled.

If this were the world of physics, I'd package up "immortalityDuration = damagePrevented / damagePerSec" with a sexy science name (The Lee's Universal Law of Healing) and go for a Nobel prize

dunehunter

Posted 18 September 2018 - 05:41 PM

dunehunter

Posted 18 September 2018 - 05:53 PM

dunehunter

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Also the damage we take is not ideally 10 per sec, there are a lot circumstances where we take very high spike damage, like being blasted or being fire focused by firearms, in these situations, the BDD’s cannot be out-damaged feature is very important. That’s why it’s superior to heal spells.

For fragile characters this is very OP also because u can completely give up defense(except will), don’t need to worry about self heal being out damaged, but still be immortal.

For self healing, u still need to have some degree of tankiness, and high Might and +%healing done gears to archive immortal, resource side BDD has advantages.

In summary, BDD is better because both cannot be outdamage and cost less stats abilities and gears to build up.

mosspit

Posted 18 September 2018 - 08:16 PM

mosspit

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I disagree with this analysis: BDD is just another form of healing. Literally any healing makes you completely unkillable for a length of time in the game, the only difference is that with most heals the length of time is directly connected to how much damage you are taking, whereas with BDD the healing is variable and the length of time is fixed. (To put another way, a Restore for 30 health against someone hitting you for 1 damage every 3 seconds has given you 90 seconds of unkillable immortality, but a fraction of second against a huge enemy army. BDD against an entire army will give you like thousands of effective healing, but against that same guy hitting you for 1 damage every 3 seconds will barely give you double-digits worth of health even with huge intellect or salvation of time.)

BDD isn't just another form healing. It imposes a state in which a character cannot fall unconscious regardless of incoming damage. Which mean incoming damage per instance can be infinite and rate of incoming dmg can be infinite per unit time. And it also does not depend on the target's Health Pool.

Honestly, I think healing and BDD are quite different. And I can't really realistically draw a comparison.

Like I said to AndreoColombo, mathematically they're the same. Healing accomplishes one fundamental thing: prevents you from dying/knockout for a period of time. This is somewhat of an abstraction (in this abstraction, you are at 1 health and any hit would kill you/knock you out), but is also fundamentally true: healing 20 health accomplishes literally nothing in the game unless that 20 health would have prevented you from dying/knockout at some point. And how long that healing prevented you from dying/knockout is what lets you measure the relative strength of a heal.

The difference between BDD and a straight-forward "instantaneous" healing is how they accomplish that fundamental thing. Instantaneous heal effects gives you fixed numerical healing, so the effective duration of its dying/knockout protection is contingent on how much damage you're taking.So like in my earlier post, if you Restore someone for 30 health, against a weak fly doing 1 damage every 3 second, you basically prevented knockout for 90 seconds. However, if you are up against twenty Dracoliches, that Restore will prevent death/knockout by a mere fraction of a second. On the flip side, BDD gives you a fixed duration of protection from dying/knockout, but that means its numerical healing is the one that varies. Like I mentioned in the previous post, BDD is extremely effective when you're fighting twenty Dracoliches because it effectively is giving you a Restore for 1000s of health. But it's extremely ineffective against that weak fly (worse than Restore, in fact).

I think some people are getting hung up on the fact that BDD 's tooltip doesn't say that it "heals you" but that's really just an in-game semantics difference. If Deadfire was just a gigantic spreadsheet that you put numbers into, it would be extremely clear that BDD is just another form of healing. I would say that people who have taken high school physics or watch pop astrophysics on TV/youtube might be able to pick this up better, because you might already then be used to equations where you're treating "different things" (like mass/acceleration, mass/energy, or space/time) as essentially interchangeable because what ultimately matters is that the terms in the equation balance out and they're describing the same physical phenomenon. Except here, instead of E= mc^2 or F=ma or K=.5 * mv^2, it's immortalityDuration = damagePrevented / damagePerSec: a spell like Restore sets damagePrevented so the final immortalityDuration varies by damagePerSec whereas BDD sets immortalityDuration which means the damagePrevented depends on damagePerSec.

To further clarify, let's talk about Druids. Druids are probably the best way to illustrate the similarities between BDD and a Restore because Druid heals are essentially all periodic heals. That means that depending on the situation, their heals are more BDD-like (inelastic duration, elastic health restored) or more Restore-like (inelastic health restored, elastic duration). Let's say The Moon's Light heals 10 every 3 seconds, and lasts 18s. How long does it prevent death? Against anyone dealing exactly 10damage every 3 seconds, it is exactly like BDD for 18s. Against anyone dealing more than 10damage every 3 seconds, The Moon's Light is essentially a Restore for 10. Against anyone dealing less than 10 damage every 3 seconds, it functions exactly like BDD for 18s plus a Restore for any of the remainder. In effect, BDD is an alternate version of Robust/The Moon's Light that says "I will always heal you an amount every 3 seconds to prevent knockout, but the price is there's no excess for you to keep if you take less damage than needed to stay alive while I'm active."

It is not mathematically the same.

There is a condition to check if a character is qualified to be unconscious. Which isIf (HP == 0) Then Char is Unconscious.

Healing counters the damage taken in order to ensure the above condition is not reached.

BDD straights up impose another condition which is HP is always at least 1. It does not take into account dmg received, it does not take into account total HP of the character (such that 1 hit KO can occur). The limitation is duration of the effect. It is completely different from the way healing is implemented.

Healing changes variables in the equation. It does not impose a condition in such a way that the kill condition cannot be reached.

Inelastic heal vs elastic heal is a misnomer. Because healing can only take place if dmg is received. BDD does not consider dmg received.Real in-game example: Consider a huge spike dmg on a low Con Character. If I have to state a scenario, it will be Wild Mind negative effect of AoE dmg. It is capable of dealing more dmg than a character's HP total at lower character levels. With tradition healing, there is no healing effect that save a character from entering unconscious state. Because healing can only take place after dmg is received and the dmg received is already more than HP total such that unconscious state is entered before healing has a chance to come into effect. BDD however can prevent this 1 hit KO as it changes the rules of the game.

mant2si

Posted 19 September 2018 - 01:23 AM

mant2si

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Okay, I want to point for everyone who think that BDD is cheesy and better than healing - that is not true Let me show simple example

1. First guy is Paladin with 21 AR - This guy usually reduce all incoming damage by -300%, he don't need BDD but need healing
2. Second guy is Marauder Streetfighter/Berserker - This guy is require BDD because there no exist others ways too survive damage peak instead of deflection stacking and out-healing
3. Third example is Helwalker/Devoted - With Plate armor - do you think that BDD will be better than Unbending ? No because your own Unbending cast will give you 30s of immortality, when BDD will give you maximum 12s

So everyone complains only about Glass Canon builds that can survive damage peaks long period of time, because they sacrifice their armor and deflection for DPS purposes ? Yes in this case BDD is better, but you should understand that in other games exist alternative mechanic for such builds:

AGGRO system
Life Leaching
Evasion
Red button passives with long cool-down

So if we talk about Solo then you will need special Priest build, this mean that if you can't kill all enemies in ~40S you will die (do you think this is proper GOD mode ? I don't think so)

If we talk party then BDD can be threaten as cheesy, but again ask yourself what the difference between -300% DM from Paladin and 12S of God mode o 30S of Unbending ?

If you can get GOD mode for unlimited period of time then yes, this is cheat, but you can always increase duration of lay on hands with salvation of time and get 20hp per 3S for 30S, or get Blade Turning for 25S ...

But to counter such simple mechanic, Obsidian can add BOSS which will disable all beneficial effects for short period of time... In Grim Dawn exist boss who by timer dispel all your buffs, if Obs will add such boss n the game be sure you will hate him much more